DAY 5

The horrible weather yet again continued. It was wetter today than our wet kit from the ice demons in the Mayfair Hotel in Dunoon (don’t go there, ever.), however, spirits were lifted as we approached the border into England, around 30 miles into our course for the day.
We stopped by the ‘welcome to england’ sign, de-mounted our bikes and kissed the plaque, jumping with joy. I stood with one leg on either side of border and wondered if you were born where I was standing, whether you would be Scottish or English?
The moment we crossed the border we were greeted with glorious sunshine which lasted the entirety of 5 minutes. Rain continued to pour down on us, shattering our previously held belief that the weather would improve once we got across the border.
Entering Cumbria, we had a hilly up and down day through the winding hills, the big climb of the day was the shap, which was roughly a 900 million ft ascent. This was a real challenge; the driving wind was pushing us down as we relentlessly continued up. We climbed and climbed, but the winding hill just never seemed to plateau. When it finally did, a very heavy mist descended on us. We literally could not see 10m in front of us, so we pulled over to the side of the road, still being battered by the driving rain and the howling wind. We phoned Oli and Tarn and got them to drive to the top to escort us down with their hazards flashing.
Once we were free of fog, there was some beautiful views on our descent. We met up again with our support car and took on supplies before preparing for our final slog. We were 20 miles away from our destination. Or so we thought.
15 miles out, we had a phone call from Tarn. Him and Oli had driven ahead to the accommodation, and had encountered a slight problem. Namely that it wasn’t there. It had magically teleported 40 miles away from where it should have been. By this point it was already 8.45pm and had covered 115 miles. The thought of doing an extra 55 miles in the dark was slightly daunting. Shivering and wet, we propped up our bikes and took shelter from the wind behind a tree in a farmers yard.
Never fear though! Handily, Tom had relatives local to the area, who had been trying without success to chase us down all day and meet us, but due to weather conditions on the shap and other setbacks etc. had been thus far unable to meet up with us and deliver their precious cargo of chocolate and biscuits. Tom called them up and after attaching all the bikes to the rack on the support car, we were escorted to the CORRECT hotel address 55 miles away.
Arriving at around 10.30pm, we collapsed into our rooms and awaited the arrival of the support car. Once they arrived, we helped them unload the bikes and secure them away. By this point, we still hadn’t eaten, and we were all in the mood for some filthy, disgusting, greasy, cardio damaging food. And lots of it. Oli and Tarn elected to drive to the nearest KFC and buy a heart stopping amount of food in a bucket. They arrived at 11.05, closing time was 11. We had to settle for sandwiches from the bar, and nibbled on them whilst planning our route for the next day, and trying to figure out how on earth we would get back on our route.